Contact Test
by sanctum-c
Summary: Xu wakes up in the infirmary with no knowledge of how and why she would be there. Written for the prompt "The Lost Hour" (fan flashworks)


Xu's eyes flicked open and she immediately regretted it. Harsh white light near blinded her and she hastily forced her eyelids closed with a groan. Her head felt like it was filled with shards of rusted metal. The air was sweltering around her, the blanket covering her had to be actually on fire to feel like that. She heard a shuffling nearby and could just about sense someone approaching her. A maddeningly familiar voice spoke and she wondered why she couldn't place it.

"Name?"

"Xu," she replied, her throat dry, parched and sore. How long had she been asleep? Where was she? What had happened to her?

"First name?"

"Mengshi."

There was a pause then and she could hear papers being turned. What had she been doing just before? The voice sighed and muttered. "Official checks be damned, I've got a better way of checking you're you." There was a pause and the voice spoke again. "How much do you play Triple Triad?"

She couldn't help but smile at that. "All the time, Doctor... Kadowaki." There. The name had come back. She was talking to Kadowaki which implied she was in the infirmary. But why?

"And the rarest card you currently hold?"

"Carbuncle."

"Yeah, you're you all right. Just a sec and I'll get the light for you."

"Thanks."

The glare abruptly dimmed and relief washed over her. She opened her eyelids a fraction, more comfortable with the now dim lighting. Kadowaki was out of her eye-line talking to someone. Sounded like she was on the phone. Xu took a moment to run her tongue around her teeth, relieved to find they were all still there; that nightmare scenario had not occurred.

"She's awake now. No sign of contamination. Yes, I ran your checklist. Yes, both lists. It's definitely her. Honestly is there no better way to check this? No. I don't know yet. Yes. Yes. Well, I'll let you know. Bye." She put the phone down with a sigh and then walked back over towards the bed. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I spent a week in the fire cave. What happened to me?"

Kadowaki frowned down at her. "You don't remember?"

Xu tried to shake her head and thought better of it as splinters of pain rattled down the back of her neck. "No."

"What's the last thing you can remember?"

Xu concentrated, the memories vague and foggy, but clearing slowly. "I was... I was just heading down for my Junction test. Then..." She sighed and tried to squirm, sending more splintery pains along her limbs. "Could you turn the air-conditioner up in here? I feel like I'm melting."

Kadowaki wet her lips, looking at her carefully and reached out a hand to touch her forehead. She snatched her hand back as if it was burnt. "Xu, you're freezing. Think." She looked serious. "What do you remember after that? Come on, it was only an hour ago."

"What?!"

It couldn't be true. She felt like she'd been sleeping for months. Her limbs felt like lead, her throat seemed to have been scoured with hot sand. Kadowaki was looking increasingly pale and hurried away from the bed. Xu strained at the vague memories trying to put them into some sort of order as the doctor returned.

"...heard of rejections doing odd things before, but nothing like this. And wiping out the memory..." She pressed Xu onto the bed with surprising force as she clamped something mercifully cool to her forehead.

"Wha-"

"Don't talk." The doctor's face was serious as she stared intently at the device against her head. The panic seemed unnecessary; she barely felt she could move at all, let alone stop Kadowaki from whatever she was doing. "Brain waves still check. No trace of Shiva in the pattern..."

Shiva. The name solidified her memories suddenly. She remembered the twinge of nervous excitement as she walked through the Balamb Garden for her first Junctioning with a Guardian Force. She'd reached the requisite training levels, had all her psych evaluations triple checked, and signed innumerable agreements about her willingness to merge her mind with that of the stored creatures. She'd studied diligently for this, reading up on theory, and even going so far as to look into the critic's stance on Junctioning and the apparent risk of irrevocable memory loss. She felt nothing short of completely prepared when she entered the separate, restricted wing of the infirmary.

A white-coated technician sat her down and ran through the principles of the process again. It felt overly familiar, she was fully aware of the sequence to prepare her mind for the Junction to take, how to call up the Guardian Force and how to remove it again for electronic storage. She let the tech talk though, finding everything the woman said tallying perfectly with what she had read.

It was oddly anti-climatic to see another technician walk in carrying a device little bigger than a shoebox and place it on the desk in front of her. With some words of assurance, both technicians left the room and the heavy, insulated door was secured. A tinny voice sounded over a concealed speaker somewhere in the room. "Okay, ready when you are. Just concentrate and you should hear it. Focus on that and then do the drill as we discussed before."

Xu closed her eyes, running through the sequence mentally. In the blackness behind her eyes she could almost hear a faint whispering. She focused her thoughts in that direction, gratified to hear it grow louder. Just a little more. She could almost see its form now and she began her junctioning sequence; two memories from her childhood and three from adulthood. It was a mnemonic trick they'd been taught; the memories concealing behind them strange sequences of dashed numbers; cryptic, curving symbols that felt almost familiar; strange poems with erratically constructed phrasing and rhythm. This was the real mechanics of Junctioning, one she was thankful she did not have to keep memorised as they were.

Childhood memory one was the day she met Quistis Trepe well before either enrolled in Balamb Garden. Childhood memory two was her first game of Triple Triad, and her first win. Simple. There was an odd sensation then; the closest thing she could equate it to was a dead-bolt drawing back. Her mind was unlocking to the GF.

Adult memory one was enrolling in the Garden. Prestigious and thrilling. Memory two was gaining the International rank of Heart in the Triple Triad rankings, an accomplishment she never boasted of, but was thrilled to hold. Adult memory three seemed almost flippant next to the others, but it had seemed right and in the end they were simply placeholders for the true mechanisms; her gaining of the rare Carbuncle card, a devastating weapon she refrained from using if at all possible. Both out of fear of losing it and for the loss of challenge the card represented.

There was that sensation again; the second bolt drawing back. The voice of the GF grew louder as she felt the odd sensation of space in her head and then pain. Intense, unquenchable pain. She caught a fragmented glimpse of what must be Shiva, her feminine form sealed in a shard of ice, snow falling all around her before Xu plummeted into suffocating blackness.

"I... it... rejected me didn't it?"

Kadowaki looked from the device to Xu, concern now settling across her features. She nodded gently. Embarrassed Xu felt the pinprick of tears forming in her eyes, her limbs still too heavy to bring them up to hide her face. "I'm sorry," the doctor said at length.

"No..." Her patient tried to speak evenly as the sadness screwed into a tight, painful ball in her stomach. "No, it's okay. It was always a possibility."

"The rejection rate is so low..." Kadowaki began before Xu shook her head, more splintering pain coursing down her neck.

"The possibility was always there. Just never thought it'd be me." Tears rolled down her cheeks and she blinked furiously trying to clear her eyes. Kadowaki wiped her face gently with a handful of tissues. "Thank you." She took a deep-breath, preparing herself for the truths she now had to face. "It's not the end of the world; there are other non-GF related roles in SeeD..."

"There are," the doctor agreed, speaking softly.

"I'll be okay," Xu said looking into Kadowaki's eyes. "I'm sure you have other patients who need you more then me."

"Probably." She still hovered.

"How long until I can move properly again?"

"From my somewhat limited experience with this scenario, you should regain all your faculties in about two hours, but given the stress the contact test put you under, I'm recommending you stay here overnight." She crossed to the door. "Want me to turn the light out?"

"Please. And... I'm too hot still."

Kadowaki flipped a switch sending a wave of cool air to settle over her and the the doctor slipped out into the main room as the light dimmed further. Xu closed her eyes, feeling a fresh flow of water trickle out of her eyes. This wouldn't get her down she kept telling herself. She was going to be an amazing SeeD. More amazing then the others because she wouldn't be able to rely on the GFs or magic. With that certainty she tried to relax, waiting and willing her limbs to feel normal once again.

* * *

**A/N:**

Junctioning GFs in _Final Fantasy VIII_ always bugged me a little; it felt like so little of it was explained and it could be achieved too easily. We get no in-game reactions to junctioning GFs or magic so there was nothing to draw on for this fic idea. I chose Xu because only a handful of SeeDs in Garden seem to use GFs at all. According to the Ultimania only Balamb Garden is cleared to use the summon spells (and Cerberus hangs around Galbadia Garden because...?) - which seems odd as I would have expected some training for this and (unless it can be simulated) it means that both Selphie and Irvine can junction with no practice. Same is true of Rinoa - in fact its worse for her as she's a civilian (and admittedly the same is then true of Selphie's apparent ability to junction as a child). The other two could at least have been taught the theory.

So this is my attempt to partly explain how the junctioning works; the idea of the cryptic symbols/codes as a means to allow the GF in are a nod to _Snow Crash_ (Neal Stephenson), and... cause one or two problems for Rinoa being able to junction GFs later... It is possible that Rinoa simply never junctions a GF until she returns to Balamb Garden in disc 2 (storywise outside of specifying almost all the orphans have to have junctioned GFs to lose their memories, there's no mention of any characters having them junctioned), and at that stage given her role in helping the other SeeDs she's given a crash course in the process. Or simply she never junctions until disc 3 at which point she is a sorceress and can plausibly override a more complex mechanism. For Selphie's childhood, possibly the GF itself could guide her in the process of junctioning.


End file.
